University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Medical School
Department of Medicine

PI: Maneesh Bhargava

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a devastating condition with significant mortality. It has been reported that 75 people per 100,000 in the United States are affected annually. There has long been intense interest in discovering and defining biomarkers of ARDS to identify patients at risk, to predict outcomes, and to elucidate mechanisms of disease. To date, the main focus for biomarkers has been on the early phases of lung injury. These studies have been performed using both animal models and human serum and broncho-alvelolar lavage fluid (BALF). While many markers of injury and inflammation have arisen, such as cytokines and coagulation factors, currently no set of biomarkers predictably identifies patients who are successfully repairing their lungs. This project studies both human BALF and a rat model of acute lung injury. The hypothesis is that a biosignature of repair exists in contrast to the disorder created by the insults causing lung injury. It is equally likely that a biosignature of repair will be complex, reflecting the transcripts and proteins of morphological rearrangements leading to restoration of structure and function after lung injury. Therefore, there may be distinct and reproducible sets of protein products within the injured alveolus that characterize successful repair that can be identified using informatics and statistical approaches into a biosignature of repair.